Oct. 14, 1964 - President Johnson today threw his arm, literally and figuratively, around the Democratic candidate for the Senate, Robert F. Kennedy.
All through the day, the President showed support for the former Attorney General. He spoke privately with Mr. Kennedy for an hour in the President’s suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and he talked animatedly with the Senate candidate on a ride in a motorcade.
Mr. Johnson and Mr. Kennedy paid a call on Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of President Kennedy, at her new apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue, near 85th St.
The trip to Mrs. Kennedy’s apartment was made without fanfare or official escort in a six-car motorcade. There were no sirens or flashing lights. The party stopped at all red lights, and the President was largely unrecognized by the public.
Mr. Kennedy himself moved during the day to quash reports of a rift between the President and himself that followed Mr. Johnson’s action in ruling Mr. Kennedy out as a Vice-Presidential possibility.
He said, in response to a question at a news conference at the Carlyle Hotel, that there was a “very close, very warm relationship” between him and Mr. Johnson.
He acknowledged that there were many published reports of a rift, but he said that “maybe they were written in the hope it would come true.”
The President was asked to make a video tape yesterday endorsing Mr. Kennedy, but the session was called off because, a Presidential aide said, Mr. Johnson had a hoarse voice.
The President’s trip to New York marked his first campaign effort on Mr. Kennedy’s behalf, and it was the climax of a long day of campaigning for Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. Kennedy’s headquarters also released a letter today from former President Harry S. Truman praising the former Attorney General for his dedication to liberal principles and urging his election.
“Bob Kennedy has shown his dedication to the principle that characterized the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, my own Fair Deal, President Kennedy’s New Frontier, and President Johnson’s Great Society,” Mr. Truman.
Despite his busy day, Mr. Kennedy found time to send a congratulatory telegram to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Kennedy told Dr. King that the prize “was richly deserved” and that his life and work symbolized “the struggle of mankind for justice and equality through nonviolent means.”
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